1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic sliver piecing in a textile machine such as a roving frame, a drawing frame or a carding engine.
2. Description of the Related Arts
Various automation systems have been adopted in a spinning mill in an effort to reduce labor and improve productivity, but sliver piecing, however, is still manually operated. This manual operation comprises the steps of overlapping a pair of sliver ends to be pieced, and rubbing the overlapped portion between the operator's palms. To obtain a pieced portion having a sufficient tensile strength and not causing a thickness unevenness in the resultant product, the silver piecing must be carefully carried out by a skilled operator. To facilitate this operation, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 62-97929 discloses an automatic sliver piecing by a device comprising a means for widening the width of an overlapped portion of sliver ends to form a flat sheet, and a means for rolling up the sheet from one edge thereof to form a bundle.
In the above publication, however, no means is proposed for automatically positioning the sliver ends to be pieced together at a predetermined area in a sliver piecing device.